Stopping traffic
He hasn’t thrown a pitch at Fenway, but Daisuke Matsuzaka is literally stopping traffic.
The driver of a tour bus stopped the bus dead in its tracks halfway into his turn onto Lansdowne Street and called out to Ida Farber, who was standing outside the Cask n’ Flagon with a handful of white headbands.
“Hey, give me one of those,” said the driver.
Farber quickly gave one to the driver and order, as well as traffic flow, was restored.
The headbands, called “Hachimaki” in Japanese, are inscribed with red Japanese lettering that translates to “If it isn’t fresh, no dice” as part of a marketing campaign for Legal Sea Foods Restaurants. Farber and three others will be handing out 10,000 of them to fans at tonight’s game.
“We thought we would write ‘Yankees suck’ on them, but we have restaurants in New York and we didn’t think that would fly,” said Roger Berkowitz, Legal’s president, who has on hand to watch the headbands get passed out. “But seriously, it’s a little bit unique and we thought it would be a good way to welcome Daisuke and his family.”
I wonder how they’ll look with Dolce sunglasses.
The pair of Sox fans from Newton got to Fenway Park’s Gate E at 6 a.m. today to wait in line for tickets to tonight’s game. About 150 people stood or leaned or sat behind them as the doors to Gate E remained shut around 3 p.m.
The friends said they would have come to Opening Day but couldn’t because Steinseck had a test.
“Plus we wanted to see Daisuke’s debut,” said Steinseck, standing over a pile of discarded Matsuzaka signs he had obviously gotten tired of holding for nine hours.
The pair was asked what was different about the park this year.
“We’ve been interviewed by about six Japanese reporters,” said Steinseck.
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